Manufacture of liquid detergent compositions requires careful balance of ingredients and process steps. During manufacture aspects of the process may need to be adjusted, for example to add more of a particular ingredient or adjust the pH of the composition, to ensure it meets product specifications. If the final product does not meet preferred specifications, this could negatively impact the cleaning or care ability of the composition and so negatively affect the consumer experience. Further it could negatively impact factors such as physical stability or physical state of the product (viscosity, pH, color etc), odor profile, safety profile or regulatory compliance. Again these can negatively affect the consumer experience.
Traditionally, during the manufacturing process samples are collected and analyzed to ensure the product meets specification. If it does not then it can be adjusted by addition of relevant components or ingredients, or the product is recycled back to make adjustments, or in some cases the product needs to be scrapped which is expensive and inefficient. However, such process does not allow for ‘real-time’ adjustment. This is inefficient as by the time the error has been noticed, the product has already moved down the production line and needs to be recycled back, or it has to be held in a storage tank until the relevant adjustment has been made. This affects process throughput as a continuous process cannot be run where a storage tank is required ahead of release of the product. Similarly, traditional methods do not allow early trend identification and hence fast interception to prevent product that does not meet specifications. All of this can be resource intensive both from a cost and ‘manpower’ perspective.
Also, traditionally only one characteristic at a time is measured, for example, pH or conductivity or weight percentage of one particular ingredient. This is again inefficient as a number of different measurement devices need to be used one after another to check all relevant characteristics.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a continuous process to make a liquid detergent composition wherein the characteristics of the composition can be adjusted in real-time and more efficiently than using current techniques.